A Short Post About Societal Black Holes

Thinking clearly about the state of the nation

Unearned unhappiness
That's all right I guess

-Ben Folds Five

It is both pompous and trite for a man of middling years, and who has achieved a degree of comfort, to sit around complaining about national decline. But local readers will back me up: national decline is ‘a thing’ here in Britain. It is palpable.

The new(ish) Labour government has, as I have previously demonstrated, sought to make hay from the ‘lived experience’ of the population in this regard by doubling down on declinism, describing the country as having well and truly gone to the dogs - and itself as the only plausible solution. It has gone about this in a characteristically inept way; rather than providing a message of hope, it seems to be trying to position itself as the political equivalent of a dose of castor oil - foul-tasting but necessary. That might have washed if the voters had a clear idea that there was a credible plan for national renewal in the offing, but this is now true surely of only the most die-hard Labour members. The rest of the population are essentially now just walking around with their fingers collectively crossed behind their backs, clinging to hope but expecting disaster.

(Keir Starmer himself seems to be aware of this - he appeared in the news today to display his spectacularly bad political communication skills, declaring that he did not want to rule out certain tax rises in the forthcoming Budget in case it ‘put the fear of God into people’. Let me tell you - that statement well and truly put the fear of God into me. But it does indicate that the PM has a sense that he may have made a misjudgment in cranking the pessimism to ‘11’ since taking office.)

The image which the government has conjured up to drive this basic point home is that of a ‘societal black hole’, as distinct from a mere economic one. The idea here would seem to be that the previous government was so bad that they even managed to damage the very fabric of society, let alone the economy. But it is also what, I believe, poker players would call a ‘tell’. Yes, the government appears to be saying, the economy has gone off the rails, and yes, the evil Tories played their part, but the real problem is you, the people, for being so foolish as to vote for the Conservatives in the first place (not to mention Brexit), and probably making foolish financial decisions to boot. The underlying message that is transmitted is: ‘Society, which is to say, the stupid and hateful proles, are the ones who’ve got us into this mess, and now we, the grown-ups, the sensibles, the experts, have to come along and fix it.’

This, let’s call it the ‘technocrat’s lament’, is entirely to be expected. The discourse that lies at the heart of technocracy is that the population are corrupt and that expert rule is necessary to save them from that inherent corruption; it would be naive to expect anything else from what is, in the end, a basically technocratic government, which makes absolutely no claim whatsoever to be governing in such a way as to represent what voters actually want.

My own feelings, though, are complicated. It seems to me that, undoubtedly, things are deteriorating, and I have written a lot in this substack about the roots of that deterioration and its trajectory. The country is in a bad way, and we can concede that to Starmer. But on the other hand, to describe society as being mired in a ‘black hole’ as such is to mischaracterise the matter rather. Society, by which we mean the people of a country in their collective interactions and relationships, is not really the problem; it is everything else - economics, politics, education, technology - that is really going wrong. ‘Society’ does not print money or set interest rates; society does not enforce (or fail to enforce) the criminal law; society does not run schools and hospitals; society does not police (or fail to police) the border or make decisions about immigration or asylum; society does not embark on exorbitantly expensive and corrupt megaprojects; society does not set climate change policy. It is the State that does those things. Society merely deals with the consequences and responds to the incentives. Yes, society may go wrong, but typically this will be as a result of government policy more than bad decision-making on the part of ordinary men and women guarding their own interests. For the most part, 'society’ represents a bastion of sanity and reserve.

And it is also true, of course, that when the crash does happen - which I am certain it will - it is society that is going to have to pick up the pieces - and society, rather than the State, in which will have to deposit our trust and faith in the aftermath as we rebuild.

I was struck by this on a recent visit to my hometown, where I took the photograph that heads this post. The scene depicted in it is the bandstand at the local park near where I grew up, where every day during the school summer holidays an afternoon of entertainment is provided to the local kids for £1 a head - and has been since 1953 (I used to go when I was knee-high-to-a-grasshopper myself). It is exceptionally good value, and genuinely enjoyable - and all basically run at the initiative of local volunteers (the founders having been a married couple who started it for fun). Watching my own children capering about with the others pretending to be one-eyed, one-horned, flying purple people-eaters, while the adults sat about on deckchairs having a moment’s respite, I was reminded that, when left alone, British people are generally pretty good at getting on with things. Problems only tend to arise when their incentives become misaligned due to over-reliance on the State - a sadly very common phenomenon - or, let’s face it, when the State interferes directly.

This is not true in all cases, and we can all think of collective action problems which genuinely need national coordination (such as the policing of the border, or, as is perhaps becoming increasingly apparent, the regulation of smartphone use for children). But by-and-large society as such is the reliable partner in the State-society relationship, and it is society which always has to provide a safety net where State interference messes everything up. Society, in other words, does not tend to fall into black holes. It gets pushed into them - by overzealous regulation - or slips into them as a result of neglect.

It is important, then, that in opposition the Conservative Party - and it is still, rightly or wrongly, the Conservative Party who have to do the work of official opposition - develops this understanding and forges a narrative to counteract Labour’s combination of low expectations and contempt when it comes to what society is capable of. What is needed is really a rhetoric not so much of societal black holes, but societal strength - and therefore of hope. Those two matters - strength and hope - are connected. And at the heart of the relationship between those two things lies the possibility not just of electoral victory for somebody but, vastly more importantly, genuine national renewal. Whether that synergy can be harnessed is another matter. But the fate of the country rests on it - and not what (as Labour believe) the State can do.